BOISE, Ida. – Today, in a sharply worded rebuke to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an administrative law judge granted Western Watersheds Project’s appeal of a 2013 grazing permit renewal decision that failed to protect sage-grouse on two public land allotments south of Ely, Nevada leased to the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA). The Cottonwood and Scotty Meadows allotments both failed to meet rangeland health standards for wildlife habitat due to inadequate vegetation cover for nesting and brood-rearing for these ground-dwelling birds.

“The Southern Nevada Water Authority should be embarrassed by the poor condition of these allotments,” said Greta Anderson, Deputy Director of Western Watersheds Project. “Given that their ranches are just water-laundering operations, the least they could do is manage them with wildlife in mind. BLM should be holding all of its grazing permittees to the highest standards and setting meaningful management that protects these public lands for everyone.”

Despite failing land-health standards for sage grouse, the proposed extension of the livestock grazing leases would not improve the damaged sage-grouse habitat, according to BLM’s own analysis.

During briefings, the BLM repeatedly denied any responsibility to adhere to the sage-grouse land use plan amendments, but even so, the administrative law judge admonished, “BLM’s selection of the proposed action and final grazing decision with no attempt to seriously consider and incorporate any terms and conditions that could benefit sage-grouse habitat was without a rational basis.”

“The BLM promised the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the American public that sage-grouse would be protected by the 2015 Approved Resource Management Plan Amendments,” said Anderson. “Those promises are broken when the agency defends decisions that do nothing to foster the enhancement of restoration of healthy sage-grouse habitat, and we’re happy the judge called them out on these failures.”

The court order urges the agency to revisit grazing management while maintaining the slightly better standards of the overturned decision in the interim. When the BLM does reissue the grazing decision, it will have to conform to the amended sage-grouse resource management plan and adjust grazing accordingly.

Yes, thank you. It’s even more important now, in light of recent changes.

Here’s the thanks and cooperation we get for not listing the sage grouse:

“Zinke directed deputies “to follow through” and immediately implement recommendations in a 53-page report to change current rules. Those recommendations include redrawing boundaries of protected habitat, increasing flexibility for land managers making decisions, clarifying standards for granting exceptions, streamlining permissions to use land and changing leasing policy for oil and gas operators. States could use captive-breeding and grouse population targets, rather than healthy habitat, as a basis for managing development.”

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‎"At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, “thus far and no further.” If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, “If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behaviour."